26 August 2016

In a Deutsche Welle TV interview, Rana Ahmad, an atheist who renounced her Sunni Muslim upbringing and fled Saudi Arabia for fear of execution, talks about her previous existence, living "in a stupor", until she became aware of the world of knowledge through the internet and began to read and do research.

"How come the education systems in Islamic countries do not provide this information?... What are they afraid of?"

Well, exactly this...a woman learning to think for herself and renouncing her faith:

What's bizarre here is the woman in the niqab sitting next to Rana Ahmad. This MEMRI clip will of course have been edited, so we must presume that the veiled woman made some sort of contribution to the debate.

As it is, she provides a sinister figure of censure, her presence a silent rebuke - a veiled threat, literally - to this renegade atheist who's brave enough to come out and voice her opinions: opinions which, in her home country, would have likely resulted in her death, if not from her parents then from the state. [Mick Hartley] Read more